Take one of my classes for example. I tell these kids every lesson that, you know, in 5 lessons we're going to have a test on this unit. Then 4 lessons. Then 3. It gets to 1 lesson away, and these kids start complaining, "What! we're not ready! Give us another day!"

It's funny, the best students never say anything. Neither do the worst students. They just accept it and take the test. It's always the C students who have to scream and shout about fairness.

That's a scenario I was all too familiar with--and now that I think about it, it usually WAS the middle-grade students who complained the most. It happened in most of my classes, and it was always the same 2 or 3 students in each class.

The worst, though, was my Russian classes (taught by the schools only GS teacher as well) That poor man caught hell from his Russian class students, and it was a shame because he was really genuinely wanted to help them learn.
My class only had myself and 4 or 5 other students in it, and they were huge slackers. He'd announce a test a week ahead of time, and remind us everyday, and the day OF the test, the other students bawled and screamed and whined and pitched the most godawful childish fits over it until he finally threw up his hands and moved the test to the next day. And the would try it again the next day! Or they would play mind games with him, and they'd all get together and say "No, you never told us about today's test, nope, no you didn't, never said a word." Being as I respected the teacher I would usually stick up for him, especially in those cases, because that's just not funny to do to a guy who'd recently had a stroke and been out of school for months.

Thankfully by my 3rd year of taking the class, he'd wisened up and let me go off in a corner and study on my own, because I was actually interested in learning something. But he did that because I was also in his gifted classes, so he knew I was an independant learner and didn't like whiners and slackers holding me back. I love to learn. Unfortunately it seems a trait that is severely lacking in most kids.

Originally Posted by TASmith

When I was a student teacher I was told I had to incorporate writing into a lesson plan. I figured, okay. I'll show each student a different artwork. They'll each write a description of the work, at least a page, and then swap discriptions. Without seeing the original, they can try to recreate the works based on the description. Neat idea?

My teaching supervisor said it was too challenging for highschool students, because they were "special needs". Meaning, two or three kids who were apathetic toward learning and thus mislabeled. Needless to say student teaching was a hellish experience for me.

I think that's a great idea for a project. It's a shame that students are so...blah...that they don't want to try or be challenged. And labelling someone as "special needs" because they don't give a fart about learning? Bah. There's a huge difference between being not trying and not being able.

"I started to see human beings as little lonesome, water-based pink meat, life forms pushing air through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to understand."
-Devin Townsend

"I think that's a great idea for a project. It's a shame that students are so...blah...that they don't want to try or be challenged. And labelling someone as "special needs" because they don't give a fart about learning? Bah. There's a huge difference between being not trying and not being able."

The kids didn't even get a chance to do it, because my fool of a supervisor said it'd be too hard for them - the same person who preached "high standards" at the beginning of the year... As for the mentally handicapped, they have a new euphamism. "Life skills."

That's even sadder, that a proposed assignment doesn't even reach the students because a supervisor steps in on their behalf and goes "Oh, it's too hard for them."
Because we can't call mentally handicapped people by the proper term, it's not PC!

You should've seen some of the rediculously pathetic projects at my high school. The Advanced Placement english classes were the worst...AP is supposed to mean more challenging, more college oriented, etc. But the teachers still had students cutting pictures out of magazines and glueing them on posterboard (And I'm not even joking) I think they read a grand total of one novel (and most students picked the shortest novels they could find) and wrote one paper on it. The rest of the time it was kiddy craft projects.

And the art classes were taught by one of the most artistically incompetant people I've ever seen. We painted a bad colour wheel every year so that we "knew how to mix colours" (hello lady, I learned yellow and blue make green in KINDERGARTEN!) and she also had us cutting out magazine pictures to make "collages", and even copying pictures out of colouring books to use for projects. She didn't teach one iota of actual artistic technique, or developing your own ideas. And everyone in her classes was pretty sure she was snorting pills or something....

"I started to see human beings as little lonesome, water-based pink meat, life forms pushing air through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to understand."
-Devin Townsend